Walsh and Ambrose Discuss A Perfect Partnership for Cricket Fans
Sports Blog:
Many Iranians and Afghans follow the game of cricket and veteran athletes like Wasim and Waqar (of Pakistan) but may be unaware that one of the best bowling partnerships in cricket is formed by Walsh and Ambrose. Now the two West Indies legends reveal the secrets to success for a new-ball duo.
Given their bowling partnership was famed for aggression and intimidation, Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose are remarkably relaxed about how they are remembered. "As part of the fast bowling fraternity, and very passionate about it, I love to see fast bowlers doing well," says Ambrose, when asked how he feels about his modern-day predecessors.
"For me, it’s a pleasure to see bowlers doing better than former greats. What Jimmy [Anderson] and Stuey [Broad] have done for the game, for example, is tremendous," says Walsh. "Hopefully another partnership will come along that will be even better."
Between 1988 and 2000, only Australia - to win the 2019 Ashes in the latest cricket betting - won more Test matches than the West Indies. Their win-loss ratio was also second-best until the end of 1995, when the standard of the team around them began to decline.
Walsh and Ambrose played a combined 230 Test matches, with their individual wicket-taking tallies – 519 for Walsh and 405 for Ambrose –adding up to 924 overall.
"From a young age I used to bowl with much older guys, but cricket wasn’t my love," says Ambrose. "My first love has always been basketball, followed by football. Cricket was third in line. Fortunately, my mother – who is a cricket fanatic – wanted a cricketer in the family. She was the driving force, and deserves all the credit for getting me into cricket... Our partnership didn’t start from when I made the team. In 1990 we became roommates, and that is when we learnt a lot more about each other and our friendship really started. There is no secret or magic to it! If he [Walsh] was taking wickets, then my job was simply to make sure I kept the same pressure from the same end. If it was my day, he’d do the same."
Walsh also nearly headed down a different path. "Originally when I started I was a spinner,” he says. "I did everything to spin the ball. But there was this concrete strip at Melbourne Cricket Club in Jamaica, where Michael Holding used to play, and I used to run in and bowl fast on that. That’s where it all started... We’d have good nights where we’d have dinner together, we’d chat, we’d discuss other things than just cricket. It helped us to understand each other, and how we each thought about things... We looked after each other. I would look to him from the boundary and tell him what I had seen or what I had noticed. And he would do the same for me. The best partnerships complement each other, but don’t compete against each other."
Walsh eventually broke into the West Indies team as a fast bowler in 1984, and was united with Ambrose four years later.
Initially, the pair had little to do with each other. But the on-field chemistry began to blossom once they were forced to spend more time together off the field.
So followed a partnership that would set the benchmark for all to follow. Of the three new-ball partnerships to take over 400 wickets, Walsh and Ambrose beat the others to the post, reaching the milestone before Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis of Pakistan and England’s Anderson and Broad.
"One of the highlights of the West Indies team was that we cherished everybody’s company," says Walsh. "It was a tremendous effort all round – every time you looked at that particular team you’d think, ‘Wow’. What we did was what the team required first and foremost."
